Cuphead

Going into this game, I was half expecting to rage quit mid-way through, given the game's reputation of being brutally hard and I really don't enjoy getting pissed off at games. But, really, the game turned out to not be that tough at all. Sure it was challenging and you'll be replaying the fights a lot, but it never got ridiculous. I think the key here being that you instantly start at the boss you want to fight with endless retries. Back in the NES/SNES era, you were lucky to even get more than one attempt at a boss and by the time you got there, you weren't even at full health due to fighting through a level first. For a more modern example, Dark Souls punishes death by making you walk back to the boss from a bonfire, often a fairly lengthy distance with enemies in between. Cuphead takes the Super Meat Boy approach of letting you immediately start over infinitely. As a result, frustration is kept to a minimum and the game is designed in such a way that the difficulty drops significantly after you learn the attacks of each boss.

Another thing I was initially worried about was that a game based almost entirely on boss battles wouldn't be very compelling. But, as a fan of boss battles in old-school games, I actually quite enjoyed the never ending gauntlet of bosses. Each one is well designed and any one boss would have been selected as the "best boss fight" of almost any NES/SNES game if they were transported into one. This is not a game being carried along by its aesthetics. Sure, I enjoyed them, but really I didn't care about how the game looked, I care about how a game plays, and this game plays well.

The development cycle for Cuphead has been a bit of a roller coaster, but after many delays and taking out second mortgages on their houses the three dudes over at Studio MDHR finally have their passion project in the hands of players. If you're not familiar with Cuphead's "shtick" it's a platformer crossed shoot'em'up set to the unique visual and audio style of 1930s western cartoons. An idea so perfectly executed in this game that I can safely say that this is one of the dopest shoot'em'ups I've ever put my hands on. As the barbershop quartet in the game's intro kindly point out; the story follows our protagonist Cuphead and his pal Mugman as they accidentally gamble their souls away to the devil while in his casino. As part of the devil's contract the duo must travel across the land of Inkwell and collect the soul contracts of various debtors by way of epic boss battles.

This sets the stage for some of the coolest boss encounters I've had in quite a while ma bois. The bosses in this game are absolutely outrageous and imaginative, with many different forms and unique twists. Structurally the fights are a mixture of airborne shoot'em'ups and platform shooting. This game is fairly demanding in it's difficulty reminiscent of classic 90s games that require you to memorise patterns, develop strategies, improve your reflexes and precision in movement. There are difficulty options; but what I love is that you cannot progress through the game unless you defeat every boss on at least "regular" difficulty, and once you've unlocked "expert" mode the game gets REALLY juicy IMO! In a game like this I really don't wanna spoil any of the bosses for ya'll but essentially there aren't any boss designs in the game that I did not love dearly, except for maybe a couple of the earlier "easier" boss encounters.

There are other types of challenges in this game like proper run and gun levels. These levels were largely responsible for the game's delays and I can see why since they showcase some of the game's rougher edges. They're perfectly adequate levels and sometimes have some pretty creative elements to them, but from a design stand point they are a bit sloppy and don't have nearly as much polish, flamboyancy, and creativity as the boss battles do. That said these levels give you the opportunity to collect coins which allows you to purchase upgrades at the store. The upgrades in this game were fun to play around with; you have things like different bullet types and charms that give you perks such as adding an extra health point - whilst decreasing your attack power - or having your super meter fill itself automatically. Super abilities can be gained by completing fun little mini games that make excellent use of the parrying mechanic, where you'll be protecting a sacred vase from a plethora of grubby ghosts.

Time for just a few more little complaints. While the parrying ability is used in some excellent ways later in the game I just feel like it's a pretty misused mechanic to begin with, since it doesn't actually damage bosses and it being limited to only "pink" items is a tad bit odd... I like that RNG is used in certain boss battles to create a sense of unpredictability and variety; that said it did lead to some attempts either being completely written off as a failure or allow you to totally cheese a boss phase simply because of how lucky/unlucky you were with the RNG. Though it was very RARE I did encounter a couple of glitches, where a boss phase would go on for infinity or my character got stuck between walls in the over world. Lastly no online multiplayer??? Do you know how excited I was to play this with my online buddies, it's 2017 people!!!

All of my complaints are pretty minor and most are fixable, thus I can only really walk away from this game being thoroughly impressed. I loved the art and animation, I thought the game-play mechanics were smooth and exciting, I LOVED the game's uncompromising sense of challenge, I LOVED the creative boss designs, even just the game's swanky Jazz soundtrack is f***ing fantastic. There's so much authorship on display with this title and you could just tell the developers and everyone else involved had a blast making this. BRAVO!